Urban League Summer Camp: Day 3

The next chapter in our 3-D journey today was... How to make your own 3-D Anaglyphs! We started out by viewing a few examples from last year, talking about which ones worked well and which didn't, and what the possible reasons might be for some being more effective than others. 

I then gave a simple overview on binocular vision and how that allows us to see in 3-D. I connected that to today's activity by describing how we can emulate binocular vision by taking two pictures: one to represent the view of one eye and the second to represent the other eye. The color properties of each picture are then manipulated and the images are viewed through filters, so that one eye sees only one perspective/picture and the other eye views the other perspective - essentially, the left eye receives the left eye view and the right eye sees the right eye view. This is then combined in our brains into a picture that appears to have depth.

After showing the kids how to take these pictures with our D50 cameras, groups of three each took a camera and went off to venture around RIT and capture images to make into anaglyphs. Upon their return an hour later, Bob and I (along with two helpful high school intern helpers!) got all of the groups situated in Optics Labs where they could then start processing and combining the images. 

HS Intern Christina lending a hand!

HS Intern Nick was a great helper, too!

 

These kids were really on top of things - they followed the directions really well and were surprisingly self-sufficient - though I don't want to take all the credit away from Nick and Christina, who both were a huge help. Everybody did a really great job today, and hopefully learned a lot (and I should think had fun doing it). Check out some of the results (don't forget to grab some red/blue 3-D glasses!):

This might be my favorite.

 

I'm not sure about this one... Once I go googly eyed enough to resolve a single image, the parts that ought to be in the foreground actually appear in the background (this is obvious in the areas where flowers overlap, so your mind knows which should be in front, but the 3-D image is not in agreement). HHHMMMM...

Sure enough, the team had the left/right images reversed. Here's a fixed up version.

 

Tomorrow we'll have a chance to look them all over and pick out favorites to use in Friday's presentation. Hard to believe there's only really 1 day left!